Premeditated Murder (27 page)

“So what does this have to do with the women in that apartment?” Cal asked.

“It looks like the son forged the check,” Zack said. “Apparently he knew that the father would either overlook it—”

“Overlook it,” scoffed Terry. “Yeah, right. If my father caught me trying to rip him off for thirteen thousand dollars, he'd have taken the check and stapled it to my forehead as a gentle reminder not to try that again.”

Angry Dad would have taken that kind of misbehavior as an opportunity to bail out of Zack's life even sooner than he actually did.

“Anyway, what ended up happening was that the father just assumed that the son was renting an apartment for himself,” Zack explained to Cal. “The family apparently doesn't communicate very well.”

“If stealing thirteen thousand dollars and then disappearing halfway around the world doesn't count as communicating,” Terry said.

“So the son gave the money to the women,” Cal mused. “And now they're dead, and we can't find him. So that's sort of a dead end.”

“Right,” Terry agreed. “Which makes this the total of what we've got so far: Some of the men that you shot spoke Arabic on the phone, and one of their conversations sounded like an old Al Qaeda conversation about pieces of an airplane. The two women you shot lived in a different apartment which was paid for by the fucked-up kid of a rich guy, and a year and a half ago, the kid was into religion in Cairo, but now he's Allah knows where. And in the women's apartment, there was a setup for forgery.” Terry shook his head. “Man, you must have had more than that to be convinced that these people were really terrorists.”

“I did,” Cal said. “You should have seen the stuff the private detectives found.”

“I'd love to,” Terry replied, “but wouldn't you know that every single private eye we spoke to told us that he destroyed every single record he ever had about this case. So that kind of sucks.”

Cal nodded. “I thought that might be a problem.”

“‘Might be,'” Terry said through clenched teeth, rubbing his forehead.

Cal's gaze was steady. “I know I messed up. I wasn't thinking straight at all.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All I knew was that when I went into that apartment, only one of two things was going to happen. Either I'd die as I succeeded in killing the terrorists, or I'd die as I failed to kill the terrorists. So it never crossed my mind that I'd need any of that information. I already knew these were bad people and they needed to be taken out. And since I figured I was a dead man, I didn't think I would need to prove anything about my motives for my actions.”

“But what about if you didn't kill them? You weren't going to bother telling the world to look out for these guys?” Terry was still pretty angry.

Cal merely smiled. “No. I did have a plan for that.”

“Which was … ?”

“I had written Steve Doctorow a letter—”

“I
knew
he knew more than he was telling us,” Terry interrupted.

“I really didn't tell Steve anything,” Cal said. “I just said that if something happened to me, he needed to open an envelope I sent with the letter and do what he thought was appropriate.”

And there it finally was. The information they needed was in the envelope with Doctorow. They had found it in the most roundabout way imaginable, but they had found it. The question remained whether Cottonwood would allow it in, but at least—

“Unfortunately, when I survived the attack, I asked Steve to destroy the envelope.”

Unfortunately.
Terry squeezed his eyes shut and said, “I don't fucking believe this.”

“I couldn't let anyone who had this information just sit there with it,” Cal said. “I told you I wasn't thinking clearly. It never crossed my mind that it would be important to prove they were terrorists. All I was thinking was that sooner or later some Al Qaeda cell would learn that this information was in Steve's hands or some poor private detective's hands and then they'd kill them.”

Cal was so busy protecting everyone else that he never stopped to think how thoroughly he was screwing himself.

“Quick question,” Terry said. “Is there anything in the past six months that you
haven't
destroyed?”

Cal just sat there, staring at him. Then he turned to Zack. “So you're telling me that this is over?”

Zack said nothing.

May 19—Detroit, Michigan

IT WAS GOOD THAT LENA WAS SO PATHETICALLY short, and way good that she wasn't claustrophobic, because Mrs. Cyr from next door had come to visit Becca. That meant that Lena had to hide in the back of Becca's closet, crouching behind the humongous framed
Star Trek
poster that Becca hadn't had a chance to put up yet.

The first time someone knocked on Becca's door, Lena thought she was going to vomit. She dove into the back of the closet and thought about all of the ways that she could give herself away. A sneeze. A leg cramp. A cough. What would happen to her if she were caught?

After that, hiding at the first hint that someone might be coming became part of Lena's routine. She tried to make it efficient, and not so terrifying.

But it was hard to feel anything but frightened when she was crammed into a closet, one forgetful moment from exposing herself to whatever awful fate awaited her at the hands of the police and the FBI.

There was something more to the LeClerq case than a high school teacher having a heart attack while calling 911. Lena was sure of that.

Unfortunately, that was about the only thing she was sure of.

Becca's theory was that the LeClerq case was, as she had called it, the tip of the nightmare, and that Lena had innocently stumbled onto something much bigger and badder than she could imagine, which was why she'd been threatened and then framed.

If that was true, then all Lena had to do was figure out what the bigger and badder thing was. Without getting herself or anyone else killed in the bargain.

Becca was fully involved now, spending whatever spare time she had checking into reports of break-ins where nothing but computer disks were taken, or reports of discrepancies in 911 tape transcripts. She was determined to find a pattern, or a name running through them all—some link that she could use to contact the FBI in Washington, D.C.

That was Becca's big plan. Contact the main office of the FBI and tell them the whole story. Lena had a little problem with that.

First, what exactly was the whole story? A dispute about who made a call to 911, and whether the caller reported a break-in or a heart attack. A police file that didn't mention the alleged break-in, during which, by the way, nothing valuable was stolen. The break-in at Lena's place. But she didn't even want to think about trying to convince an FBI agent in Washington that all of the drugs all over her apartment were planted there by FBI agents here in Michigan.

Oh, and the amazing disappearing Officer Halsey. And the veiled threat from Sergeant Whatever His Name Was.

Like anyone would ever believe her.

What it all boiled down to was that Lena was going to have to stay in hiding at Becca's place. She had had to stop going to work, and Becca was supporting both of them. Lena had done some research online from Becca's apartment and had noticed an unusual number of break-ins in Dearborn. She was going to have to figure out a way to speak to these victims without exposing herself to whoever was threatening her. It was hard to believe that there was a connection, but if there was, Lena was going to find it.

The idea that somebody had broken into her apartment and was trying to frame her was awful, and yeah, she was scared. But as time passed, something began to take root beneath her fear. Something that drove her to continue to try to connect the dots, to find out what was going on here—who was terrorizing her, who was coming into people's homes for reasons she still hadn't figured out.

Who had taken her life from her.

Camp David, Maryland

BORIS STALEY WAS USHERED INTO MATT'S OFFICE.

The young man wore a suit that was remarkably ill-fitting and had the worst haircut and the largest glasses Matt had ever seen. He was blinking at an alarming rate. He looked scared to death.

Matt could only imagine the poor guy's confusion. His day had probably started just like every other day. First breakfast, then a ride on the train to his job as a computer programmer—“information technology specialist”—for the I.R.S. But on the way home, things went very differently. As soon as Boris left the building, a couple of big guys pounced on him, hustled him into a car, stuck a phone in his hand, and suddenly he's being driven to Camp David, for his own safety. What the hell?

“Hello,” the young man stammered. “I'm Boris Staley, sir. I guess you wanted to see me.” He obviously had no clue what was going on. Welcome to the club.

“I'm sorry about all the drama, Boris,” Matt said, walking over to shake the young man's hand, “but I'm concerned that your life is in danger, and I needed to know that you are safe.”

Apparently, the faster Boris blinked, the more his brain worked. Boris had gone to Cal Tech, and was as smart as you'd expect a computer programmer to be, but even he couldn't begin to make sense of this whole thing. “I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt me. I'm just an I.T. guy who works for the I.R.S. I don't even get involved in anyone's taxes. I doubt that more than ten people in Washington know my name. Sir.”

Matt smiled sadly. “Unfortunately, Boris,” he said, “that is no longer true.”

May 20

IT WAS A COMBINATION FAMILY GET-TOGETHER, picnic lunch, and emergency national security meeting. Seated at the conference table at the presidential retreat at Camp David with Matt and Sammy were Internal Revenue Service information technology specialist Boris Staley, strung about as tight as a ukulele, fearfully blinking away behind the giant windshield he wore as eyeglasses, and presidential body man Carlos Oliveira, who looked just about old enough to get into an R-rated movie.

Thomas Jefferson was probably turning over in his grave.

But then Jefferson hadn't discovered that his predecessor had set up a large-scale blackmail operation targeting federal judges. Matt needed help from people he could trust. And right now, these were the people he could trust. Sammy's phone call to Judge Seaver in California had been very unsuccessful. Matt was down to Boris.

Deli-style sandwiches, potato salad, soda, and iced tea had been served. Nobody seemed very hungry, though.

“Why don't we get started,” Matt said, pushing away his plate. “The sooner I get this thing figured out, the sooner I can try to do something about it.” He turned to young Mr. Staley, who was about five seconds from jumping out of his skin, and said, “Boris, were you able to get in touch with your folks?”

The question caught the anxious fellow entirely by surprise. For a moment, incredibly, the rate of blinking actually increased, but then he seemed to settle down a bit. He swallowed, gulped a breath, and spoke. “Uh, yes, sir. Yes, Mr. President, I did, thank you.”

“Good. I didn't want there to be any unnecessary anxiety, in case you needed to stay put for a little while.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Boris said.
Blink, blink.
“They said they were really excited to speak to you.”

“Good,” Matt said. Now that the poor kid was talking, there was a chance that he wouldn't hyperventilate himself into a heart attack. “So how about you tell us about your meeting with Charley Cullhane?”

The young man started to speak, but something must have gotten caught in his throat, and he started to choke. He reached for his soda with trembling hands and, coughing, he took a drink. It was anybody's guess whether that would calm him down, or whether he'd be the first person to drown in a glass of ginger ale at Camp David. But the storm passed, and he set the soda down on the table and got himself together.

“I don't remember exactly when it was, but about a year and a half ago, totally out of the blue, I got this e-mail from a guy who said his name was Charley Cullhane. He claimed he worked for the President, and he wanted to meet me for lunch to talk about something private—”

Sammy interrupted. “He said he worked for the President?”

Boris was nearly startled into another choking fit, but he hung in there. “I didn't save the e-mail, but it either said he worked for the President or for the White House. Anyway, we met for lunch, and he asked me for, well, the craziest report I ever heard of. He said it was a huge secret that had to do with national security. I checked his identification, and he even had a letter of introduction.”

“From the President?” Sammy asked.

“No, from the Chief of Staff,” Boris said. “Mr. Browning.”

Creepy Vernon Browning.
Matt looked over to Sammy, who kept her eyes on Boris. She never gloated about the serious things. He stretched out his leg and touched her shoe with his. He would apologize more formally later.